A wide variety of mating electrical connectors employ pairs of interengaging pin and socket terminals for interconnecting a plurality of circuits or wires through the mated connectors. The pin and socket terminals often are called male and female terminals.
The terminals are mounted in a plurality of terminal-receiving cavities in a dielectric housing of the electrical connector. The terminals generally are elongated and are inserted into the cavities along the longitudinal axes of the terminals. Some form of latch means normally are provided to hold the terminals in the cavities against withdrawal therefrom.
Generally, there are two types of terminal latch means, and both types present various problems. First, the terminals often are provided with outwardly projecting, cantilevered flexible latch arms which snap behind shoulders within the terminal-receiving cavities of the connector housing. The cantilevered latch arms have a tendency to bend, break and/or snag on other parts. For instance, the latch arms may be bent or collapsed on a reel of interconnected terminals during shipping, prior to fabricating the connector. In addition, in order to have any significant latching capabilities, the latch arms must be of a sufficient width which often limits the width of the contact portions of the terminals and reduces the cross section area through which a current must pass which, in turn, causes over-heating.
Second, the connector housing may have plastic locking tabs which project into the terminal-receiving cavities for latching or locking behind more rigid shoulders on the terminals. Such latching systems are difficult to manufacture and may cause a myriad of problems, including but not limited to potential damages when removing a terminal from the connector housing during servicing, long term degradation due to temperature and humidity cycling, and difficulty in monitoring consistency from circuit-to-circuit or cavity-to-cavity. The plastic locking projections are weaker than metal latch arms. In addition, field servicing requires a stock or inventory of connector housings, because one defective locking projection results in discarding a complete connector housing, and housing replacement opens up the possibility of wiring errors.
This invention is directed to solving the above myriad of problems by providing a simple and reliable latching system for terminals in an electrical connector of the character described.